One simple question: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company’s product to a friend?”

It turns out to be a fundamentally important metric and central to the successful implementation of social media. Think about it: If your own customers would not recommend you…well, you have a serious problem.

Measurement and the social Web go hand in hand, although it’s not always obvious how to go about measuring something as dynamic as a conversations.

As a largely online phenomenon, social media measurement borrows heavily from existing online metrics. At the same time, questions like “How likely is it that you would recommend my brand to a friend?” are rooted in the principles that drive social media.

There are two key points that must be stressed:

Building A Winning Brand

Building a winning brand and maintaining one are two different things: Dell built a commanding position in the personal computer (PC) market by offering a better way for its customers to buy one.

When its customer service floundered however, Hewlett Packard (HP) gained and retook the global market share lead in the third quarter of 2006. Dell is now pushing hard to regain its top spot and not coincidentally social media and the positive practices that drive it are part of Dell’s program.

In both of these cases, the role of the customer recommendation is central to the rise or fall of the brands.

Social Media Evangelism

Put two concepts together, the evangelist as the key to long-term growth and that profit earned by means that fail to delight your customers threatens your long-term viability and you have what is essentially a formula for success not only on the social Web but in businesses as well.

On the social Web, made up of social media applications such as social networking platforms, blogs, photo and video sharing, collaborative event planning tools, ratings and reviews and more, the conversations that stem from actual, delightful experiences with products and services are the key to driving and sustaining evangelism and hence long-term growth of brands.

Traditional marketing programs are essential in driving awareness and seeding markets. Evangelism causes a steady amplification that builds over time through the combination of word of mouth and digital content on the social Web.

It literally creates markets. Contemporary brands and their social reputations are being built through practices that encourage evangelism.

A large piece of your customer base will enthusiastically promote you for a variety of reasons if you’ll only give them the means. This desire goes beyond any single characteristic, for example, price associated with your brand.

Social media is an articulation of the response to your brand, product or service in actual use. The ad or PR campaigns you create set the expectations against which that response is generated.

Fundamentally, the social Web is built on conversations that do not belong to you but instead belong to someone else. Instead of trying to control the conversation (or worse, the participants), you have to change your product or service experience that drives the conversation. This, along with your behavior on the social Web, is the only element of a social media campaign over which you have full control.

If you’ve got a great product that is delivering a superior (delightful) experience, then use social components such as blogs or video sharing that encourage more talk: use the social Web as a platform to spread your message.

If you’ve got work to do, use tools such as support forums to identify and correct issues: use the social Web as a listening tool and take the conversation to the communities where you can fix the problems. Above all, participate and be open and honest about what you are doing.

Influence And Metrics

“How likely are you to recommend company X?” Embodied in this simple question is everything that powers (or destroys) a brand on the social Web. This one question is the basis of a very simple but powerful measure of influence.

When your customers willingly support you through a pricing structure that provides a profit based on satisfaction and are at the same time willing to evangelize your brand, to recommend you to others, you are in a splendid position.

Applying social media will then be a very straightforward and largely risk-free proposition. After all, your customers are already talking about you favorably and you have a business model that will stand up over time.

Are you worried about “managing the conversation”? In effect, you already are. Through the experience of delight that you already provide, you are influencing the conversation in a way that is favorable to your brand’s position.

The experience of delight is the only way to positively influence the conversation on the social Web. Delight can arise as the result of great experience or because you handled an experience that was less than great…in a great way.

Provide a great experience, and the conversation will take care of itself. Conversely, provide a poor one and the conversation will reflect that instead. The measurement of influence and in particular tracking it over time is key to managing your social presence and fully tapping the social Web to its potential.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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